Songwriter/composer/producer Joe Henry is a hyperliterate storyteller, drawing an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles – folk, rock, jazz and blues –  and rendering genre modifiers useless. Working with an incredibly diverse range of musicians – from Elvis Costello to Ornette Coleman to Richie Havens – Henry has produced four Grammy-Winning records: Don’t Give Up On Me(Solomon Burke), Genuine Negro Jig (Carolina Chocolate Drops), A Stranger Here (Ramblin’ Jack Elliott), and Slipstream (Bonnie Raitt).

Henry shares his personal reflections on the origins of his new album, The Gospel According To Water: “The album is called The Gospel According To Water. It was recorded over two days this past June, and fairly by accident, when I thought I was merely making demos of thirteen new songs ahead of forgetting them – all but two written between Valentine’s and Father’s Day; all having flowered from the black earth of recent experience – namely a cancer diagnosis late last fall that left me reeling – though, as well, set into motion many blessings and positive shifts in my life, as well as an unprecedented songwriting flurry.

“With only a handful of friends playing in support, I entered the studio and tore through these songs with determination and abandon, then went home. I had let nothing clutter or distract me from the essential and true heart of these songs; and upon waking the morning after, I listened and understood that something had transpired that was more than I’d bargained for; that the songs as articulated had sparked an ember that somehow remained bright and alive before me, moving beyond my expectations. I unexpectedly heard the songs as complete, and vividly so; and knew that the casual circumstances had not limited my expression but in fact liberated me from the cloying aim for posterity that can make weighty any session – and landed me instead in a place both unencumbered by the past and unattached to futures.

“Though they have all grown out of darkness, I don’t believe any of these songs themselves to be “dark” in nature, nor about the circumstance that promoted their discovery. In them, I hear deep gratitude, and a compassion toward self that I don’t always possess; an optimism I did not know I’d allowed to flourish. These recordings are raw and wirey and spare because the songs insisted they be. But I believe them to be as wholly realized – as “produced” – as anything I’ve touched, as well as being deeply and fundamentally romantic: in love with life, even when that life founders and threatens to disappear; lustfully aglow, not in spite of the storm but because of one. Come November, then, I will hand this all over – while the sky is bright, and leaves are still turning and descending – the days listing as they grow brisk and shorter. Just in time for Thanksgiving.”